Jared Kushner, the Ivanka Trump-dating New York Observer publisher, once promised a Politicker for all 50 states. Yeah, so much for that. A tipster reports: "all of the non-East Coast sites are shutting down."

What does Ben Silverman, skiing enthusiast and co-chairman of craptacular NBC, do when everyone wonders why he's still employed? Judging by today's New York Post, tell his favorite outlet how great he is.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH might've gotten something "tangible" from associates of Jesse Jackson, Jr! The scandal is in its baroque period now, with the fun transcripts picked through, leaving only complicated questions of political propriety.

The Rod Blagojevich scandal has dominated several news cycles, so the Obama team seems to have decided the time is right to distance, distance, distance itself from the corrupt Illinois governor.

A critical Stalker sent us a secretly-snapped pic of Washington Post Watergate-breaking journalist Carl Bernstein, reading one of "his own damn books on a plane." It's A Woman in Charge: the Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Golden Globes will be decided by 83 well-fed junketeers of the HFPA who are idiots. So, why not vote in the Gawker Golden Globe Poll before you start throwing things at your TV?

It's so passé to be a vapid consumerist spendthrift. Even Barney's warns that conspicuous consumption will probably get you "branded an idiot," for God's sake. But most socialites can't help themselves; if they stop setting huge piles of money on fire, they'll get frostbite, in their sick little hearts. This fundamental tension between fashionable goods and fashionable austerity has, at last, been resolved, by traveling showrooms, blackmarket house parties and secret shops, all for the uber rich. Times Styles has the lowdown:

Wiretap transcripts yesterday indicated that Tribune Company honcho Sam Zell might have subtly conveyed (wink-wink) that he might just have to restructure (wink wink) one or more bothersome Chicago Trib editorial writers out of their jobs in response to demands from Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was delaying a deal to buy the Chicago Cubs from cash-strapped Zell. Insanely, it has emerged that the whole thing was Blago's evil wife's idea ("hold up that fucking Cubs shit. . . fuck them"), but also that it seems to have gone nowhere.

Last month, we noted that acting poor is all the rage among the rich. Sort of like reducing your carbon footprint was the big thing last year. Vanity Fair's Michael Shnayerson brings us more obnoxious examples of the wealthy complaining about how poor they are now. For instance, the laidoff Lehman executive who is cutting her maid's rather than sell her handbags or the ghastly idea of flying commercial.

Sometimes the mere existence of a rumor is as interesting as the rumor itself, and the recent surge of people breathlessly telling us that Wendi Deng Murdoch is cuckolding News Corp. Rupert Murdoch certainly falls into that category. In the last couple weeks, three separate people have come forward to tell us Deng is having an affair with Chris DeWolfe, a MySpace founder who now works for Rupert after News Corp. purchased the social network three years ago for $580 million. It's pretty clear there is a campaign underway to get this story out. And whoever it is has finally found an outlet to bite. There's certainly no shortage of people who might have an ax to grind against Murdoch, Deng or even DeWolfe. If you have any idea who's behind it, please email me.

The Waverly Inn was crawling with Condé Nast insiders earlier tonight, some of whom had been waiting as long as 20 years for the appetizer: The hot, delicious rumor that Si Newhouse was meeting in Paris with Carine Roitfeld to work out the final details of the French Vogue editor's move to New York, where she is expected to take over flagship Vogue from Anna Wintour immediately after New Year's. It did not go unnoticed when Condé Nast overlord Newhouse departed early for his annual three-week December vacation in Vienna; it turns out he needed time for his meeting with uptight Wintour's chic Parisian counterpart.

The Huffington Post reported David Gregory will take over for Tim Russert as permanent moderator of Meet The Press after beating out finalists Andrea Mitchell, Gwen Ifill and Chuck Todd. NBC told Politico, "I don't know where they are getting this," and Gregory's agent would neither confirm nor deny to the Observer. Dark-horse candidate Katie Couric is reportedly not interested. Odd that NBC News would leak to HuffPo, given the network division's apparent long-running feud with publisher Arianna Huffington, but then there have been signs that the bad feelings have perhaps been dropped.

So yes, today is Black Friday, the day when big stores roll out big, one-day-only bargains in the hopes of setting a high sales bar for the all-important Holiday Season (Christmas! And, to a much lesser extent, Chanukkah!) Good savings are especially urgent this year, with the economy in the crapper and everyone needing to buy things for as cheap as possible (just short of not buying it at all. That would be ludicrous!) Every year, people line up super, super early in the morning. And in some cases, store employees get trampled to death when the doors open and crazed shoppers try to push their way in. (Un)Fortunately there is no photo documentation of that particular melee, but Getty managed to snap some shots at Macy's in New York City and at a Best Buy electronics store in Los Angeles this morning and the madness is palpable. Click after the jump for a gallery.

With Thanksgiving over, we'd like now to officially ring in the Archie season. Won't you sing some Archie carols and standards with us?

Winona Ryder's "Fishy Situations '08 Tour" continues its road trip across Europe, as the actress rebounded from her exciting, hospital-assisted London landing by heading off to Madrid for a Marie Claire event. The magazine lent the purchase-averse Ryder clothes, shoes, and a ring and Bulgari bracelet (pictured) that totaled $125,000. The next day, Ryder returned everything but the jewelry. A French magazine reported a claim from Ryder (since disavowed) that she had given the items to the front desk after checkout, but the surveillance camera didn't back the story up. Now, TMZ has a different, equally suspicious account:

[Actress Sarah Jessica Parker with fashion designer Valentino at opening night for the New York City Ballet; image via Getty]

If ever there was a grim picture of the current financial clusterfuck, it's the once artsy (Björk! sigur rós!), hip, and rich island nation wonderland of Iceland, which fell into cataclysmic economic failure earlier this month. And it happened pretty much overnight. Since the three major banks collapsed under crippling debt and a plummeting currency, job loss has been widespread—the architecture industry, for example, has seen some 75% of its work force laid off in the past few weeks. Now the seemingly peaceful population has devolved into an angry, violent mob, with a gay "troubadour" named Hordur Torfason leading the charge against the government.

If Sumner Redstone had just sold his CBS stock back when it looked like he was in trouble, he might have gotten $10, even $15 per share. Instead he sold only what he was forced to, then wasted a lot of time huffing and puffing in the press about how he would never ever sell another CBS or Viacom share, even though $800 million was due in December. In the meantime CBS shares plummeted to less than $5, and only now is Redstone admitting the obvious: He may have to sell some of that stock. Reports the Times:

It was an awkward moment, topping even Barack Obama's meeting with the president he spent two years running against: Economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman, receiving congratulations for his Nobel Prize from the man he said built the "Party of Stupid," who "got rid of accountability," and who "was lying" about his "patently, shamelessly dishonest" budget, among many, many other brutal criticisms Krugman has leveled against the president over the past seven years. The photo, by Chip Somodevilla, says plenty, but hopefully Krugman will write something (for his blog?) on the words that actually came out of the president's mouth at the Oval Office meeting.

• Anna Wintour's daughter Bee Shaffer, the aspiring journalist, is graduating from Columbia in May and is "really nervous about the fact nobody's hiring right now." If she gets desperate she could take one of those awful personal assistant jobs working for a magazine editor. (She won't get desperate.) [NYM]